EXCLUSIVERevealed: Holly Willoughby's hell at the hands of trolls who connected kidnap and murder plot ordeal to Phillip Schofield. And the one question that still haunts her...
An unexpected knock on Holly Willoughby's door on a dark night last October changed her life for ever.
On her doorstep were police officers who told her that, just hours earlier, they had foiled a plot to kidnap, rape and murder her. The accused, security guard Gavin Plumb, was now in custody.
Friends of the TV presenter tell me she was 'numb... dumbfounded' at the revelation — but, most of all, was 'truly terrified'.
As the police spoke to her and with her husband, TV executive Dan Baldwin, at her side, I'm told Holly, all too understandably, 'descended into an absolute state'.
And little wonder. As a jury later heard, before they convicted Plumb of all charges against him this week, the 30stone fanatic had gathered a disturbing array of items that he planned to use to kidnap Holly, including a chloroform restraint kit, handcuffs, cable ties and ball gags.
Holly Willoughby was so shaken by the police's disclosure that they had foiled a plot to kidnap, rape and murder her, she refused to leave her London home at all for several weeks
Security guard Gavin Plumb was convicted by a jury of all charges against him this week
Once he'd kidnapped her, he planned to take her to an abandoned and isolated stud farm for sexual torture, then kill her and dump her body in a lake. These gruesome details shook Holly immeasurably.
'It came from nowhere and for no reason,' says someone close to her. 'It's the kind of thing that makes you go weak at the knees. Can you imagine what that did to her? One minute she was preparing to get up the next day and host This Morning, the next she was too scared to go to work.'
More than this, I can reveal, Holly was so shaken by the police's disclosure that she refused to leave her London home at all for several weeks. Indeed, the first time she was seen in public was in late December when she and her family were spotted going for lunch near her home.
So debilitating were the revelations that she kept much of the detail of Plumb's horrifying plan a secret from even those close to her. 'As far as many people around Holly were concerned she just had a stalker,' said one friend.
'There was no comprehension it was anything more than that. Celebrities having stalkers is sadly a very common thing, but this was so much more. But she couldn't say too much about it. It broke her.'
One of the first calls Holly made after the police visit was to her boss at ITV, the channel's head of daytime TV, Emma Gormley.
Gormley, who oversees This Morning, was sworn to secrecy by a shaken Holly. Not even This Morning's editor Martin Frizell — a big supporter and close friend of Holly's — was made aware of the situation until shortly before the presenter made her statement announcing her exit from the live television show five days later.
In a flash, Holly's world had been entirely reduced to the four walls of her south-west London home.
Friends rallied round: Spice Girl Emma Bunton, All Saints singer Nicole Appleton and Holly's ITV colleague Christine Lampard all visited her home as she was too frightened even to consider leaving home to visit them.
Plumb captured on bodycam during his arrest last October
The 30-stone fanatic had gathered a disturbing array of items that he planned to use to kidnap Holly, including a chloroform restraint kit, handcuffs, cable ties and ball gags
Support also came from her elder sister Kelly, to whom she is very close, as well as her parents Linda, 75, and Brian, 71.
But while her life became one of seclusion, her children — Harry, 14, Belle, 12, and Chester, nine — still had to go to school and maintain some semblance of normality.
I'm told Holly struggled to take her eyes off her children at this moment of crisis. This feeling was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that she and her husband, despite their wealth, always wanted their children to have a normal upbringing, in a proper community.
This was one of the main reasons they remained in their London enclave, living on a relatively busy street rather than moving to an isolated country estate, for example, even though it was well within their means to do so.
In the aftermath of her scare, supportive ITV bosses provided 24/7 security outside the family home. Until then, the house had been free of any surveillance or CCTV.
This, the court heard, was something Plumb had learned as he plotted to kidnap, rape and murder Holly. He told an undercover American officer on an online chat group called Abduct Lovers: 'I have a s***load of info on her I know when she does and don't have security and that she doesn't have CCTV at home. What time she gets up in the morning.'
But while Holly now only truly felt safe at home, the hours that were suddenly empty thanks to her retreat from the world became plagued with worry. Despite Plumb being in custody, Holly, 43, couldn't stop thinking 'what if?' Her entire life became consumed by fear.
'It is chilling,' says one friend. 'All kinds of things go through your head.' The friend told me one particular thing that haunted her and her family was the fortunate manner in which Plumb had been caught: what if the undercover police officer in America hadn't happened to be in that chat room to foil him, she worried.
Other fears were based around the fact that the most disturbing online content came in conversations Plumb had with a man only referred to as Marc.
Listen to our #1 True Crime podcast The Trial: The Holly Willoughby Plot
One of the first calls Holly made after the police visit was to her boss at ITV, the channel's head of daytime TV, Emma Gormley
Holly, 43, left This Morning after she fell out with former co-presenter Phillip Schofield
Through the course of the trial, few details of Marc's identity were revealed, apart from that he was an Irish resident and at one point claimed to have convictions for stalking. The Mail this week revealed he was 49-year-old Mark Mulligan from Dublin.
In voice notes sent to Plumb by Mulligan and played to the court, they appeared to urge each other on, as they chatted in a highly sexualised way on WhatsApp and the chat app Kik and discussed what they would do to Holly and where they would take her after they kidnapped her.
Mulligan remains at large, but I am told the Garda — Irish police — have him under observation. The thought that Plumb was not the only man who indulged in such grotesque fantasies about her remains a source of deep concern.
Indeed, the whole nightmare was exacerbated for Holly by the fact that, as a potential sexual assault victim, she was entitled to lifetime anonymity. This would have meant that the public would never have known she was his intended victim.
However, when The Sun newspaper was alerted to the plot, Holly's former representatives confirmed the details — and even shared extra details of her horror.
Later, though, says one source close to the scenario: 'There were attempts to put the genie back in the bottle but it was impossible —the facts had been put out there. Holly then had to deal not just with the public but also her young children knowing about it.'
Holly with her elder sister Kelly, to whom she is very close and who was a great support to the television presenter following her ordeal with Plumb
Social media trolls soon piled in and shared their theory that the whole plot was just a convenient excuse to leave This Morning after she had so brutally fallen out with former co-presenter Phillip Schofield. He quit the show when his relationship with a much younger colleague was revealed. One ITV insider tells me: 'Everywhere anyone connected with This Morning or ITV went, people told them it was an easy way out for Holly.
'It was hideous. If only those people knew the truth about what had happened. Holly would have given anything to go to work and carry on with her life, which had been so happy. For people to say, or even imply it gave her an easy way out, is disgusting.'
Most terrifying of all was the thought that Plumb, 37, would get off. As the court date approached, Holly's anxiety intensified.
Throughout she was supported by her legal team, which included Alison Morgan KC, whom Holly is 'extremely fond of'. Morgan successfully argued that the former security guard's previous conviction of kidnapping two 16-year-olds in a Woolworths in Harlow in 2008 should be included in the trial.
After Plumb's conviction, Holly told how grateful she was those victims came forward. In a statement, she said: 'As women, we should not be made to feel unsafe going about our daily lives and in our own home... I would like to commend the bravery of his previous victims for speaking up at the time. Without their bravery this conviction may not have been possible.'
Friends says Holly is 'slowly' finding her feet again. After much deliberation, she decided to return to ITV's skate show Dancing On Ice in January where she was reunited with her close friend and former children's television colleague Stephen Mulhern as co-presenter.
She did, say those who know her, find it 'cathartic' and the set was somewhere she could go and 'have a bit of a giggle'. Anything to escape the angst she had faced for so long.
Then, in May, she filmed her first Netflix show, Bear Hunt, alongside survival expert Bear Grylls, flying to Costa Rica with him.
Today, she is considering other contracts. ITV sources say that they would love nothing more than to give her a big Saturday night show to anchor.
But other friends believe her life will never be the same again — how could it be?
'It's a hard one,' says an ITV insider who knows Holly well. 'You want to get back to it but at the same time it surely will take a long time to get over all of this.'
